Imaging Apple OSX bootcamp/parallels with Altiris?
Palvaran
August 13th, 2009
Hey Everyone,
I know we have had several discussions on imaging Macintosh computers using Altiris and forwarding requests to the netboot servers, but has anyone been able to successfully image the bootcamp/parallels side directly via Altiris?
Example. Computer 1 is a dualboot Mac running OSX and Windows. Both operating systems are using an agent for a total of 2 agents being allocated by the deployment server. A bootworks WinPE package is sent to the Windows side of the Mac, but once the computer reboot is performed, it is never is able to connect due to what I think is the absence of a hardware abstraction layer unless I am mistaken.
Has anyone had any success with imaging or forwarding on the windows side?
Hi Palvaran, I'm just about
Hi Palvaran,
I'm just about to enter the realm of imaging dual booted macs from Altiris too.
I will be setting up an OSX Server for netbooting which i'm guessing will give me mac imaging abilities. From what i can gather, I should be able to use Altiris to set the job off which will cause the ADLAgent on the mac side, or the AClient on the Windows side to reboot the machine.
(I don't yet know how Altiris forces the machine to netboot - i'm guessing it somehow manipulates the boot disk settings just as if you doing it from within the Bootcamp control panel (win) or System Prefs (mac).)
However....
What i'm really unsure about is how to handle the renaming of the Windows half of the machine using Altiris (the machine would need to be forced to boot Windows) to complete the configuration, and then somehow automate the renaming of the Mac half as well...
I'm kinda approaching it from what seems to me like a slightly different angle than you, but by the sounds, our end goals are the same... i'm hoping that if someone else responds to your question, i too can learn and perhaps find a better approach to getting this daunting task done... ;-)
Good Evening Chris!
I think I can answer this part, "(I don't yet know how Altiris forces the machine to netboot - i'm guessing it somehow manipulates the boot disk settings just as if you doing it from within the Bootcamp control panel (win) or System Prefs (mac).)"
I am not sure if you have seen the technical powerpoint guide for imaging Macs at kb.altiris.com, but here is the summary of it.
Essentially, on the mac side, once the Altiris Agent is installed and the command to image is issued it forces the computer to reboot and make a connection to the netboot server and, using the created OSX IMG file containing the Altiris Agent, it downloads the correct IMG file in the background kinda like how WinPE works.
"The happiness of your life, depends on the quality of your thoughts."
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